It took Speaker Pelosi just hours to get an $8.3 billion coronavirus bill passed in the House, Mr. President
March 04, 2020
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Stories Chosen For You
'We’re still gonna say no': Inside UnitedHealthcare’s effort to deny coverage to chronically ill patient
February 02, 2023
by David Armstrong, Patrick Rucker and Maya Miller
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
In May 2021, a nurse at UnitedHealthcare called a colleague to share some welcome news about a problem the two had been grappling with for weeks.
United provided the health insurance plan for students at Penn State University. It was a large and potentially lucrative account: lots of young, healthy students paying premiums in, not too many huge medical reimbursements going out.
But one student was costing United a lot of money. Christopher McNaughton suffered from a crippling case of ulcerative colitis — an ailment that caused him to develop severe arthritis, debilitating diarrhea, numbing fatigue and life-threatening blood clots. His medical bills were running nearly $2 million a year.
United had flagged McNaughton’s case as a “high dollar account,” and the company was reviewing whether it needed to keep paying for the expensive cocktail of drugs crafted by a Mayo Clinic specialist that had brought McNaughton’s disease under control after he’d been through years of misery.
On the 2021 phone call, which was recorded by the company, nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was “not medically necessary.” Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.
“I knew that was coming,” said Opperman, who heads up a United subsidiary that brokered the health insurance contract between United and Penn State. “I did too,” Kavanaugh replied.
Opperman then complained about McNaughton’s mother, whom he referred to as “this woman,” for “screaming and yelling” and “throwing tantrums” during calls with United.
The pair agreed that any appeal of the United doctor’s denial of the treatment would be a waste of the family’s time and money.
“We’re still gonna say no,” Opperman said.
More than 200 million Americans are covered by private health insurance. But data from state and federal regulators shows that insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment. Many people, faced with fighting insurance companies, simply give up: One study found that Americans file formal appeals on only 0.1% of claims denied by insurers under the Affordable Care Act.
Insurers have wide discretion in crafting what is covered by their policies, beyond some basic services mandated by federal and state law. They often deny claims for services that they deem not “medically necessary.”
When United refused to pay for McNaughton's treatment for that reason, his family did something unusual. They fought back with a lawsuit, which uncovered a trove of materials, including internal emails and tape-recorded exchanges among company employees. Those records offer an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at how one of America's leading health care insurers relentlessly fought to reduce spending on care, even as its profits rose to record levels.
As United reviewed McNaughton’s treatment, he and his family were often in the dark about what was happening or their rights. Meanwhile, United employees misrepresented critical findings and ignored warnings from doctors about the risks of altering McNaughton’s drug plan.
At one point, court records show, United inaccurately reported to Penn State and the family that McNaughton’s doctor had agreed to lower the doses of his medication. Another time, a doctor paid by United concluded that denying payments for McNaughton’s treatment could put his health at risk, but the company buried his report and did not consider its findings. The insurer did, however, consider a report submitted by a company doctor who rubber-stamped the recommendation of a United nurse to reject paying for the treatment.
United declined to answer specific questions about the case, even after McNaughton signed a release provided by the insurer to allow it to discuss details of his interactions with the company. United noted that it ultimately paid for all of McNaughton’s treatments. In a written response, United spokesperson Maria Gordon Shydlo wrote that the company’s guiding concern was McNaughton’s well-being.
“Mr. McNaughton’s treatment involves medication dosages that far exceed FDA guidelines,” the statement said. “In cases like this, we review treatment plans based on current clinical guidelines to help ensure patient safety.”
But the records reviewed by ProPublica show that United had another, equally urgent goal in dealing with McNaughton. In emails, officials calculated what McNaughton was costing them to keep his crippling disease at bay and how much they would save if they forced him to undergo a cheaper treatment that had already failed him. As the family pressed the company to back down, first through Penn State and then through a lawsuit, the United officials handling the case bristled.
“This is just unbelievable,” Kavanaugh said of McNaughton’s family in one call to discuss his case. ”They’re just really pushing the envelope, and I’m surprised, like I don’t even know what to say.”
The Same Meal Every Day
Now 31, McNaughton grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, just blocks from the Penn State campus. Both of his parents are faculty members at the university.
In the winter of 2014, McNaughton was halfway through his junior year at Bard College in New York. At 6 feet, 4 inches tall, he was a guard on the basketball team and had started most of the team’s games since the start of his sophomore year. He was majoring in psychology.
When McNaughton returned to school after the winter holiday break, he started to experience frequent bouts of bloody diarrhea. After just a few days on campus, he went home to State College, where doctors diagnosed him with a severe case of ulcerative colitis.
A chronic inflammatory bowel disease that causes swelling and ulcers in the digestive tract, ulcerative colitis has no cure, and ongoing treatment is needed to alleviate symptoms and prevent serious health complications. The majority of cases produce mild to moderate symptoms. McNaughton’s case was severe.
Treatments for ulcerative colitis include steroids and special drugs known as biologics that work to reduce inflammation in the large intestine.
McNaughton, however, failed to get meaningful relief from the drugs his doctors initially prescribed. He was experiencing bloody diarrhea up to 20 times a day, with such severe stomach pain that he spent much of his day curled up on a couch. He had little appetite and lost 50 pounds. Severe anemia left him fatigued. He suffered from other conditions related to his colitis, including crippling arthritis. He was hospitalized several times to treat dangerous blood clots.
For two years, in an effort to help alleviate his symptoms, he ate the same meals every day: Rice Chex cereal and scrambled eggs for breakfast, a cup of white rice with plain chicken breast for lunch and a similar meal for dinner, occasionally swapping in tilapia.
His hometown doctors referred him to a specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, who tried unsuccessfully to bring his disease under control. That doctor ended up referring McNaughton to Dr. Edward Loftus Jr. at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which has been ranked as the best gastroenterology hospital in the country every year since 1990 by U.S. News & World Report.
For his first visit with Loftus in May 2015, McNaughton and his mother, Janice Light, charted hospitals along the 900-mile drive from Pennsylvania to Minnesota in case they needed medical help along the way.
Mornings were the hardest. McNaughton often spent several hours in the bathroom at the start of the day. To prepare for his meeting with Loftus, he set his alarm for 3:30 a.m. so he could be ready for the 7:30 a.m. appointment. Even with that preparation, he had to stop twice to use a bathroom on the five-minute walk from the hotel to the clinic. When they met, Loftus looked at McNaughton and told him that he appeared incapacitated. It was, he told the student, as if McNaughton were chained to the bathroom, with no outside life. He had not been able to return to school and spent most days indoors, managing his symptoms as best he could.
McNaughton had tried a number of medications by this point, none of which worked. This pattern would repeat itself during the first couple of years that Loftus treated him.
In addition to trying to find a treatment that would bring McNaughton’s colitis into remission, Loftus wanted to wean him off the steroid prednisone, which he had been taking since his initial diagnosis in 2014. The drug is commonly prescribed to colitis patients to control inflammation, but prolonged use can lead to severe side effects including cataracts, osteoporosis, increased risk of infection and fatigue. McNaughton also experienced “moon face,” a side effect caused by the shifting of fat deposits that results in the face becoming puffy and rounder.
In 2018, Loftus and McNaughton decided to try an unusual regimen. Many patients with inflammatory bowel diseases like colitis take a single biologic drug as treatment. Whereas traditional drugs are chemically synthesized, biologics are manufactured in living systems, such as plant or animal cells. A year’s supply of an individual biologic drug can cost up to $500,000. They are often given through infusions in a medical facility, which adds to the cost.
McNaughton had tried individual biologics, and then two in combination, without much success. He and Loftus then agreed to try two biologic drugs together at doses well above those recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Prescribing drugs for purposes other than what they are approved for or at higher doses than those approved by the FDA is a common practice in medicine referred to as off-label prescribing. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates 1 in 5 prescriptions written today are for off-label uses.
There are drawbacks to the practice. Since some uses and doses of particular drugs have not been extensively studied, the risks and efficacy of using them off-label are not well known. Also, some drug manufacturers have improperly pushed off-label usage of their products to boost sales despite little or no evidence to support their use in those situations. Like many leading experts and researchers in his field, Loftus has been paid to do consulting related to the biologic drugs taken by McNaughton. The payments related to those drugs have ranged from a total of $1,440 in 2020 to $51,235 in 2018. Loftus said much of his work with pharmaceutical companies was related to conducting clinical trials on new drugs.
In cases of off-label prescribing, patients are depending upon their doctor’s expertise and experience with the drug.“In this case, I was comfortable that the potential benefits to Chris outweighed the risks,” Loftus said.
There was evidence that the treatment plan for McNaughton might work, including studies that had found dual biologic therapy to be efficacious and safe. The two drugs he takes, Entyvio and Remicade, have the same purpose — to reduce inflammation in the large intestine — but each works differently in the body. Remicade, marketed by Janssen Biotech, targets a protein that causes inflammation. Entyvio, made by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, works by preventing an excess of white blood cells from entering into the gastrointestinal tract.
As for any suggestion by United doctors that his treatment plan for McNaughton was out of bounds or dangerous, Loftus said “my treatment of Chris was not clinically inappropriate — as was shown by Chris’ positive outcome.”
The unusual high-dose combination of two biologic drugs produced a remarkable change in McNaughton. He no longer had blood in his stool, and his trips to the bathroom were cut from 20 times a day to three or four. He was able to eat different foods and put on weight. He had more energy. He tapered off prednisone.
“If you told me in 2015 that I would be living like this, I would have asked where do I sign up,” McNaughton said of the change he experienced with the new drug regimen.
When he first started the new treatment, McNaughton was covered under his family’s plan, and all his bills were paid. McNaughton enrolled at the university in 2020. Before switching to United’s plan for students, McNaughton and his parents consulted with a health advocacy service offered to faculty members. A benefits specialist assured them the drugs taken by McNaughton would be covered by United.
McNaughton joined the student plan in July 2020, and his infusions that month and the following month were paid for by United. In September, the insurer indicated payment on his claims was “pending,” something it did for his other claims that came in during the rest of the year.
McNaughton and his family were worried. They called United to make sure there wasn’t a problem; the insurer told them, they said, that it only needed to check his medical records. When the family called again, United told them it had the documentation needed, they said. United, in a court filing last year, said it received two calls from the family and each time indicated that all of the necessary medical records had not yet been received.
In January 2021, McNaughton received a new explanation of benefits for the prior months. All of the claims for his care, beginning in September, were no longer “pending.” They were stamped “DENIED.” The total outstanding bill for his treatment was $807,086.
When McNaughton’s mother reached a United customer service representative the next day to ask why bills that had been paid in the summer were being denied for the fall, the representative told her the account was being reviewed because of “a high dollar amount on the claims,” according to a recording of the call.
Misrepresentations
With United refusing to pay, the family was terrified of being stuck with medical bills that would bankrupt them and deprive McNaugton of treatment that they considered miraculous.
They turned to Penn State for help. Light and McNaughton’s father, David, hoped their position as faculty members would make the school more willing to intervene on their behalf.
“After more than 30 years on faculty, my husband and I know that this is not how Penn State would want its students to be treated,” Light wrote to a school official in February 2021.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers wrote that “supporting the health and well-being of our students is always of primary importance” and that “our hearts go out to any student and family impacted by a serious medical condition.” The university, she wrote, does “not comment on students’ individual circumstances or disclose information from their records.” McNaughton offered to grant Penn State whatever permissions it needed to speak about his case with ProPublica. The school, however, wrote that it would not comment “even if confidentiality has been waived.”
The family appealed to school administrators. Because the effectiveness of biologics wanes in some patients if doses are skipped, McNaughton and his parents were worried about even a delay in treatment. His doctor wrote that if he missed scheduled infusions of the drugs, there was “a high likelihood they would no longer be effective.”
During a conference call arranged by Penn State officials on March 5, 2021, United agreed to pay for McNaughton’s care through the end of the plan year that August. Penn State immediately notified the family of the “wonderful news” while also apologizing for “the stress this has caused Chris and your family.”
Behind the scenes, McNaughton’s review had “gone all the way to the top” at United’s student health plan division, Kavanaugh, the nurse, said in a recorded conversation.
The family’s relief was short-lived. A month later, United started another review of McNaughton’s care, overseen by Kavanaugh, to determine if it would pay for the treatment in the upcoming plan year.
The nurse sent the McNaughton case to a company called Medical Review Institute of America. Insurers often turn to companies like MRIoA to review coverage decisions involving expensive treatments or specialized care.
Kavanaugh, who was assigned to a special investigations unit at United, let her feelings about the matter be known in a recorded telephone call with a representative of MRIoA.
“This school apparently is a big client of ours,” she said. She then shared her opinion of McNaughton’s treatment. “Really this is a case of a kid who’s getting a drug way too much, like too much of a dose,” Kavanaugh said. She said it was “insane that they would even think that this is reasonable” and “to be honest with you, they’re awfully pushy considering that we are paying through the end of this school year.”
MRIoA sent the case to Dr. Vikas Pabby, a gastroenterologist at UCLA Health and a professor at the university’s medical school. His May 2021 review of McNaughton’s case was just one of more than 300 Pabby did for MRIoA that month, for which he was paid $23,000 in total, according to a log of his work produced in the lawsuit.
In a May 4, 2021 report, Pabby concluded McNaughton’s treatment was not medically necessary, because United’s policies for the two drugs taken by McNaughton did not support using them in combination.
Insurers spell out what services they cover in plan policies, lengthy documents that can be confusing and difficult to understand. Many policies, such as McNaughton’s, contain a provision that treatments and procedures must be “medically necessary” in order to be covered. The definition of medically necessary differs by plan. Some don’t even define the term. McNaughton’s policy contains a five-part definition, including that the treatment must be “in accordance with the standards of good medical policy” and “the most appropriate supply or level of service which can be safely provided.”
Behind the scenes at United, Opperman and Kavanaugh agreed that if McNaughton were to appeal Pabby’s decision, the insurer would simply rule against him. “I just think it’s a waste of money and time to appeal and send it to another one when we know we’re gonna get the same answer,” Opperman said, according to a recording in court files. At Opperman’s urging, United decided to skip the usual appeals process and arrange for Pabby to have a so-called “peer-to-peer” discussion with Loftus, the Mayo physician treating McNaughton. Such a conversation, in which a patient’s doctor talks with an insurance company’s doctor to advocate for the prescribed treatment, usually only occurs after a customer has appealed a denial and the appeal has been rejected.
When Kavanaugh called Loftus’ office to set up a conversation with Pabby, she explained it was an urgent matter and had been requested by McNaughton. “You know I’ve just gotten to know Christopher,” she explained, although she had never spoken with him. “We’re trying to advocate and help and get this peer-to-peer set up.”
McNaughton, meanwhile, had no idea at the time that a United doctor had decided his treatment was unnecessary and that the insurer was trying to set up a phone call with his physician.
In the peer-to-peer conversation, Loftus told Pabby that McNaughton had “a very complicated case” and that lower doses had not worked for him, according to an internal MRIoA memo.
Following his conversation with Loftus, Pabby created a second report for United. He recommended the insurer pay for both drugs, but at reduced doses. He added new language saying that the safety of using both drugs at the higher levels “is not established.”
When Kavanaugh shared the May 12 decision from Pabby with others at United, her boss responded with an email calling it “great news.”
Then Opperman sent an email that puzzled the McNaughtons.
In it, Opperman claimed that Loftus and Pabby had agreed that McNaughton should be on significantly lower doses of both drugs. He said Loftus “will work with the patient to start titrating them down” — or reducing the dosage — “to a normal dose range.” Opperman wrote that United would cover McNaughton’s treatment in the coming year, but only at the reduced doses. Opperman did not respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment.
McNaughton didn’t believe a word of it. He had already tried and failed treatment with those drugs at lower doses, and it was Loftus who had upped the doses, leading to his remission from severe colitis.
The only thing that made sense to McNaughton was that the treatment United said it would now pay for was dramatically cheaper — saving the company at least hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — than his prescribed treatment because it sliced the size of the doses by more than half.
When the family contacted Loftus for an explanation, they were outraged by what they heard. Loftus told them that he had never recommended lowering the dosage. In a letter, Loftus wrote that changing McNaughton’s treatment “would have serious detrimental effects on both his short term and long term health and could potentially involve life threatening complications. This would ultimately incur far greater medical costs. Chris was on the doses suggested by United Healthcare before, and they were not at all effective.”
It would not be until the lawsuit that it would become clear how Loftus’ conversations had been so seriously misrepresented.
Under questioning by McNaughton’s lawyers, Kavanaugh acknowledged that she was the source of the incorrect claim that McNaughton’s doctor had agreed to a change in treatment.
“I incorrectly made an assumption that they had come to some sort of agreement,” she said in a deposition last August. “It was my first peer-to-peer. I did not realize that that simply does not occur.”
Kavanaugh did not respond to emails and telephone messages seeking comment.
When the McNaughtons first learned of Opperman’s inaccurate report of the phone call with Loftus, it unnerved them. They started to question if their case would be fairly reviewed.
“When we got the denial and they lied about what Dr. Loftus said, it just hit me that none of this matters,” McNaughton said. “They will just say or do anything to get rid of me. It delegitimized the entire review process. When I got that denial, I was crushed.”
A Buried Report
While the family tried to sort out the inaccurate report, United continued putting the McNaughton case in front of more company doctors.
On May 21, 2021, United sent the case to one of its own doctors, Dr. Nady Cates, for an additional review. The review was marked “escalated issue.” Cates is a United medical director, a title used by many insurers for physicians who review cases. It is work he has been doing as an employee of health insurers since 1989 and at United since 2010. He has not practiced medicine since the early 1990s.
Cates, in a deposition, said he stopped seeing patients because of the long hours involved and because “AIDS was coming around then. I was seeing a lot of military folks who had venereal diseases, and I guess I was concerned about being exposed.” He transitioned to reviewing paperwork for the insurance industry, he said, because “I guess I was a chicken.”
When he had practiced, Cates said, he hadn’t treated patients with ulcerative colitis and had referred those cases to a gastroenterologist.
He said his review of McNaughton’s case primarily involved reading a United nurse’s recommendation to deny his care and making sure “that there wasn't a decimal place that was out of line.” He said he copied and pasted the nurse’s recommendation and typed “agree” on his review of McNaughton’s case.
Cates said that he does about a hundred reviews a week. He said that in his reviews he typically checks to see if any medications are prescribed in accordance with the insurer’s guidelines, and if not, he denies it. United’s policies, he said, prevented him from considering that McNaughton had failed other treatments or that Loftus was a leading expert in his field.
“You are giving zero weight to the treating doctor’s opinion on the necessity of the treatment regimen?” a lawyer asked Cates in his deposition. He responded, “Yeah.”
Attempts to contact Cates for comment were unsuccessful.
At the same time Cates was looking at McNaughton’s case, yet another review was underway at MRIoA. United said it sent the case back to MRIoA after the insurer received the letter from Loftus warning of the life-threatening complications that might occur if the dosages were reduced.
On May 24, 2021, the new report requested by MRIoA arrived. It came to a completely different conclusion than all of the previous reviews.
Dr. Nitin Kumar, a gastroenterologist in Illinois, concluded that McNaughton’s established treatment plan was not only medically necessary and appropriate but that lowering his doses “can result in a lack of effective therapy of Ulcerative Colitis, with complications of uncontrolled disease (including dysplasia leading to colorectal cancer), flare, hospitalization, need for surgery, and toxic megacolon.”
Unlike other doctors who produced reports for United, Kumar discussed the harm that McNaughton might suffer if United required him to change his treatment. “His disease is significantly severe, with diagnosis at a young age,” Kumar wrote. “He has failed every biologic medication class recommended by guidelines. Therefore, guidelines can no longer be applied in this case.” He cited six studies of patients using two biologic drugs together and wrote that they revealed no significant safety issues and found the therapy to be “broadly successful.”
When Kavanaugh learned of Kumar’s report, she quickly moved to quash it and get the case returned to Pabby, according to her deposition.
In a recorded telephone call, Kavanaugh told an MRIoA representative that “I had asked that this go back through Dr. Pabby, and it went through a different doctor and they had a much different result.” After further discussion, the MRIoA representative agreed to send the case back to Pabby. “I appreciate that,” Kavanaugh replied. “I just want to make sure, because, I mean, it’s obviously a very different result than what we’ve been getting on this case.”
MRIoA case notes show that at 7:04 a.m. on May 25, 2021, Pabby was assigned to take a look at the case for the third time. At 7:27 a.m., the notes indicate, Pabby again rejected McNaughton’s treatment plan. While noting it was “difficult to control” McNaughton’s ulcerative colitis, Pabby added that his doses “far exceed what is approved by literature” and that the “safety of the requested doses is not supported by literature.”
In a deposition, Kavanaugh said that after she opened the Kumar report and read that he was supporting McNaughton’s current treatment plan, she immediately spoke to her supervisor, who told her to call MRIoA and have the case sent back to Pabby for review.
Kavanaugh said she didn’t save a copy of the Kumar report, nor did she forward it to anyone at United or to officials at Penn State who had been inquiring about the McNaughton case. “I didn’t because it shouldn’t have existed,” she said. “It should have gone back to Dr. Pabby.”
When asked if the Kumar report caused her any concerns given his warning that McNaughton risked cancer or hospitalization if his regimen were changed, Kavanaugh said she didn’t read his full report. “I saw that it was not the correct doctor, I saw the initial outcome and I was asked to send it back,” she said. Kavanaugh added, “I have a lot of empathy for this member, but it needed to go back to the peer-to-peer reviewer.”
In a court filing, United said Kavanaugh was correct in insisting that Pabby conduct the review and that MRIoA confirmed that Pabby should have been the one doing the review.
The Kumar report was not provided to McNaughton when his lawyer, Jonathan Gesk, first asked United and MRIoA for any reviews of the case. Gesk discovered it by accident when he was listening to a recorded telephone call produced by United in which Kavanaugh mentioned a report number Gesk had not heard before. He then called MRIoA, which confirmed the report existed and eventually provided it to him.
Pabby asked ProPublica to direct any questions about his involvement in the matter to MRIoA. The company did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the case.
A Sense of Hopelessness
When McNaughton enrolled at Penn State in 2020, it brought a sense of normalcy that he had lost when he was first diagnosed with colitis. He still needed monthly hours-long infusions and suffered occasional flare-ups and symptoms, but he was attending classes in person and living a life similar to the one he had before his diagnosis.
It was a striking contrast to the previous six years, which he had spent largely confined to his parents’ house in State College. The frequent bouts of diarrhea made it difficult to go out. He didn’t talk much to friends and spent as much time as he could studying potential treatments and reviewing ongoing clinical trials. He tried to keep up with the occasional online course, but his disease made it difficult to make any real progress toward a degree.
United, in correspondence with McNaughton, noted that its review of his care was “not a treatment decision. Treatment decisions are made between you and your physician.” But by threatening not to pay for his medications, or only to pay for a different regimen, McNaughton said, United was in fact attempting to dictate his treatment. From his perspective, the insurer was playing doctor, making decisions without ever examining him or even speaking to him.
The idea of changing his treatment or stopping it altogether caused constant worry for McNaughton, exacerbating his colitis and triggering physical symptoms, according to his doctors. Those included a large ulcer on his leg and welts under his skin on his thighs and shin that made his leg muscles stiff and painful to the point where he couldn’t bend his leg or walk properly. There were daily migraines and severe stomach pain. “I was consumed with this situation,” McNaughton said. “My path was unconventional, but I was proud of myself for fighting back and finishing school and getting my life back on track. I thought they were singling me out. My biggest fear was going back to the hell.”
McNaughton said he contemplated suicide on several occasions, dreading a return to a life where he was housebound or hospitalized.
McNaughton and his parents talked about him possibly moving to Canada where his grandmother lived and seeking treatment there under the nation’s government health plan.
Loftus connected McNaughton with a psychologist who specializes in helping patients with chronic digestive diseases.
The psychologist, Tiffany Taft, said McNaughton was not an unusual case. About 1 in 3 patients with diseases like colitis suffer from medical trauma or PTSD related to it, she said, often the result of issues related to getting appropriate treatment approved by insurers.
“You get into hopelessness,” she said of the depression that accompanies fighting with insurance companies over care. “They feel like ‘I can’t fix that. I am screwed.’ When you can’t control things with what an insurance company is doing, anxiety, PTSD and depression get mixed together.”
In the case of McNaughton, Taft said, he was being treated by one of the best gastroenterologists in the world, was doing well with his treatment and then was suddenly notified he might be on the hook for nearly a million dollars in medical charges without access to his medications. “It sends you immediately into panic about all these horrific things that could happen,” Taft said. The physical and mental symptoms McNaughton suffered after his care was threatened were “triggered” by the stress he experienced, she said.
In early June 2021, United informed McNaughton in a letter that it would not cover the cost of his treatment regimen in the next academic year, starting in August. The insurer said it would only pay for a treatment plan that called for a significant reduction in the doses of the drugs he took.
United wrote that the decision came after his “records have been reviewed three times and the medical reviewers have concluded that the medication as prescribed does not meet the Medical Necessity requirement of the plan.”
In August 2021, McNaughton filed a federal lawsuit accusing United of acting in bad faith and unreasonably making treatment decisions based on financial concerns and not what was the best and most effective treatment. It claims United had a duty to find information that supported McNaughton’s claim for treatment rather than looking for ways to deny coverage.
United, in a court filing, said it did not breach any duty it owed to McNaughton and acted in good faith. On Sept. 20, 2021, a month after filing the lawsuit, and with United again balking at paying for his treatment, McNaughton asked a judge to grant a temporary restraining order requiring United to pay for his care. With the looming threat of a court hearing on the motion, United quickly agreed to cover the cost of McNaughton’s treatment through the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. It also dropped a demand requiring McNaughton to settle the matter as a condition of the insurer paying for his treatment as prescribed by Loftus, according to an email sent by United’s lawyer.
The Cost of Treatment
It is not surprising that insurers are carefully scrutinizing the care of patients treated with biologics, which are among the most expensive medications on the market. Biologics are considered specialty drugs, a class that includes the best-selling Humira, used to treat arthritis. Specialty drug spending in the U.S. is expected to reach $505 billion in 2023, according to an estimate from Optum, United’s health services division. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that analyzes the value of drugs, found in 2020 that the biologic drugs used to treat patients like McNaughton are often effective but overpriced for their therapeutic benefit. To be judged cost-effective by ICER, the biologics should sell at a steep discount to their current market price, the panel found.
A panel convened by ICER to review its analysis cautioned that insurance coverage “should be structured to prevent situations in which patients are forced to choose a treatment approach on the basis of cost.” ICER also found examples where insurance company policies failed to keep pace with updates to clinical practice guidelines based on emerging research.
United officials did not make the cost of treatment an issue when discussing McNaughton’s care with Penn State administrators or the family.
Bill Truxal, the president of UnitedHealthcare StudentResources, the company’s student health plan division, told a Penn State official that the insurer wanted the “best for the student” and it had “nothing to do with cost,” according to notes the official took of the conversation.
Behind the scenes, however, the price of McNaughton’s care was front and center at United.
In one email, Opperman asked about the cost difference if the insurer insisted on only paying for greatly reduced doses of the biologic drugs. Kavanaugh responded that the insurer had paid $1.1 million in claims for McNaughton’s care as of the middle of May 2021. If the reduced doses had been in place, the amount would have been cut to $260,218, she wrote.
United was keeping close tabs on McNaughton at the highest levels of the company. On Aug. 2, 2021, Opperman notified Truxal and a United lawyer that McNaughton “has just purchased the plan again for the 21-22 school year.”
A month later, Kavanaugh shared another calculation with United executives showing that the insurer spent over $1.7 million on McNaughton in the prior plan year.
United officials strategized about how to best explain why it was reviewing McNaughton’s drug regimen, according to an internal email. They pointed to a justification often used by health insurers when denying claims. “As the cost of healthcare continues to climb to soaring heights, it has been determined that a judicious review of these drugs should be included” in order to “make healthcare more affordable for our members,” Kavanaugh offered as a potential talking point in an April 23, 2021, email.
Three days later, UnitedHealth Group filed an annual statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosing its pay for top executives in the prior year. Then-CEO David Wichmann was paid $17.9 million in salary and other compensation in 2020. Wichmann retired early the following year, and his total compensation that year exceeded $140 million, according to calculations in a compensation database maintained by the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The newspaper said the amount was the most paid to an executive in the state since it started tracking pay more than two decades ago. About $110 million of that total came from Wichmann exercising stock options accumulated during his stewardship.
The McNaughtons were well aware of the financial situation at United. They looked at publicly available financial results and annual reports. Last year, United reported a profit of $20.1 billion on revenues of $324.2 billion.
When discussing the case with Penn State, Light said, she told university administrators that United could pay for a year of her son’s treatment using just minutes’ worth of profit.
“Betrayed”
McNaughton has been able to continue receiving his infusions for now, anyway. In October, United notified him it was once again reviewing his care, although the insurer quickly reversed course when his lawyer intervened. United, in a court filing, said the review was a mistake and that it had erred in putting McNaughton’s claims into pending status.
McNaughton said he is fortunate his parents were employed at the same school he was attending, which was critical in getting the attention of administrators there. But that help had its limits.
In June 2021, just a week after United told McNaughton it would not cover his treatment plan in the upcoming plan year, Penn State essentially walked away from the matter.
In an email to the McNaughtons and United, Penn State Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Andrea Dowhower wrote that administrators “have observed an unfortunate breakdown in communication” between McNaughton and his family and the university health insurance plan, “which appears from our perspective to have resulted in a standstill between the two parties.” While she proposed some potential steps to help settle the matter, she wrote that “Penn State’s role in this process is as a resource for students like Chris who, for whatever reason, have experienced difficulty navigating the complex world of health insurance.” The university’s role “is limited,” she wrote, and the school “simply must leave” the issue of the best treatment for McNaughton to “the appropriate health care professionals.”
In a statement, a Penn State spokesperson wrote that “as a third party in this arrangement, the University’s role is limited and Penn State officials can only help a student manage an issue based on information that a student/family, medical personnel, and/or insurance provider give — with the hope that all information is accurate and that the lines of communication remain open between the insured and the insurer.”
Penn State declined to provide financial information about the plan. However, the university and United share at least one tie that they have not publicly disclosed.
When the McNaughtons first reached out to the university for help, they were referred to the school’s student health insurance coordinator. The official, Heather Klinger, wrote in an email to the family in February 2021 that “I appreciate your trusting me to resolve this for you.”
In April 2022, United began paying Klinger’s salary, an arrangement which is not noted on the university website. Klinger appears in the online staff directory on the Penn State University Health Services webpage, and has a university phone number, a university address and a Penn State email listed as her contact. The school said she has maintained a part-time status with the university to allow her to access relevant data systems at both the university and United.
The university said students “benefit” from having a United employee to handle questions about insurance coverage and that the arrangement is “not uncommon” for student health plans.
The family was dismayed to learn that Klinger was now a full-time employee of United.
“We did feel betrayed,” Light said. Klinger did not respond to an email seeking comment.
McNaughton’s fight to maintain his treatment regimen has come at a cost of time, debilitating stress and depression. “My biggest fear is realizing I might have to do this every year of my life,” he said.
McNaughton said one motivation for his lawsuit was to expose how insurers like United make decisions about what care they will pay for and what they will not. The case remains pending, a court docket shows.
He has been accepted to Penn State’s law school. He hopes to become a health care lawyer working for patients who find themselves in situations similar to his.
He plans to reenroll in the United health care plan when he starts school next fall.
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TOPEKA — Election officials debunked ideas of so-called ballot mules stuffing dozens of votes into drop boxes, reassuring lawmakers Tuesday that the boxes are already secure during a hearing fraught with election security concerns and misinformation.
During a House Elections Committee hearing, House Bill 2057 was opposed by a slew of election officers and voting rights advocacy groups questioned the need for the legislation. They included Loud Light, the Disability Rights Center of Kansas and the Kansas African American Affairs Commission.
Drop box security
The legislation would impose strict regulations on remote ballot boxes. County election offices with populations of less than 30,000 would be allowed to use only one remote ballot box per election. For county election offices in areas with more than 30,000 people, another box would be granted for each additional group of 30,000. The remote box would have to be under continual observation by an employee or via video, and closed when the election office is closed.
The video recording would have to be situated so the faces of people dropping off the ballots into the box would be recorded, and the recording would be kept for a year, available for public record, among other stipulations. Critics of the bill say it’s unnecessary, would block Kansans from their democratic right to vote and would prove costly for local election offices, which pay for elections.
Mike Taylor, who spoke on behalf of the Kansas County Commissioners Association, which represents the elected commissioners in all 105 counties, said the organization opposed the legislation on many grounds and felt it would harm voter privacy.
“We are opposing this bill because we think it’s going to disenfranchise many, many voters who depend on easy access to those drop boxes,” Taylor said. “We also think it’s going to add a lot of unneeded expense to the counties and taxpayers.”
The only person who spoke in favor of the bill during the meeting was an out-of-state speaker, Madeline Malisa from the Opportunity Solutions Project.
When asked if there was any evidence of ballot box tampering in the state, Malisa said she hadn’t heard of anything in Kansas but thought the lack of evidence could be due to the lack of ballot box video surveillance.
Rep. Kenneth Collins, R-Mulberry, asked county election officials if they had heard of any “mules” harassing people trying to drop off votes. Committee Vice Chair Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, also brought up mules, a conservative term for people who are paid to cast illegal ballots.
“I think part of the concern that’s kind of driven bills like this has been partly the whole notion of what are called mules, as far as that somehow somebody’s going to stuff a ballot box akin to, you know, there was a documentary called ‘2,000 Mules’ that came out a year ago,” Waggoner said.
“2,000 Mules,” a debunked film from right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, falsely claims there was significant voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. The movie’s makers have been sued for defamation.
Election officials said they weren’t aware of any issues with drop boxes during the 2020 and 2022 elections, in terms of people trying to tamper with boxes or in terms of ballot security.
Rep. Cindy Neighbor, D-Shawnee, questioned the need for additional ballot box security measures.
“From our secretary of state, it doesn’t appear that we’ve had a problem with them,” Neighbor said. “And the ones we are seeing are extremely secure. And that’s why I wanted clarity on how this was happening in Kansas.”
Other voting legislation
Stacey Knoell, executive director of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, said she was one of 14,917 people who voted by drop box in Johnson County during the 2021 election.
Knoell said she objected to the bill and other recently introduced legislation, such as House Bill 2056, which would require all advance ballots to be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, eliminating the three-day window currently in place.
“I think it is part of the government’s job to make voting as accessible and as equitable as we can for people who need to vote,” Knoell said. “I want to reiterate what another conferee said: If we take this bill in conjunction with other bills, we’re just making it more difficult to vote for various reasons. We’re not having a three-day extended period. I just oppose these upon the moral stance that we need to make it more easy for people to vote in this country.”
HB 2056 was voted on during the meeting and garnered enough votes to pass favorably out of the committee, despite some objections from lawmakers.
Neighbor said she believed the bill would harm overseas soldiers who didn’t get their ballots sent back on time, through no fault of their own, and felt it harmed constitutional rights.
Another bill considered during the hearing was better received. House Bill 2053 would authorize the secretary of state to adopt rules and regulations for returning advance voting ballots to remote ballot boxes.
The secretary of state would use existing resources to provide procedure training for county election officials, work with the public to ensure knowledge of remote ballot box requirements, and include dates, times and locations for drop-box protocol.
The legislation was supported by Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office, with staffer Clay Barker saying regulations would provide physical security standards for drop boxes, chain of custody, disability access and would protect county election officers by ensuring they have met the proper standards for drop-off ballot procedures.
Election officials and a spokeswoman from the League of Women Voters of Kansas said they also supported the bill, as it would clear up confusion and provide better guidelines.
Barker said the regulations would also hopefully alleviate election security concerns.
“There is concern out there about drop boxes, ‘2,000 Mules,’ ballot harvesting, and this is a way to respond to it,” Barker said.
The Big Lie
Many Republicans at the national and local level have denied the results of the 2020 election, casting doubt on election security. Schwab has bucked this trend by repeatedly underscoring the security of Kansas elections, including in the 2022 midterms.
Other Kansas Republicans have called for more stringent voting security measures despite a lack of evidence for widespread voter fraud. Proposed voting restrictions have drawn criticism from groups who say many of the new bills would disenfranchise voters.
When asked if he was concerned about voters’ rights, committee chairman Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican, said he was trying to walk the line between addressing vulnerabilities in the system and making the voting process more difficult.
Proctor also said that lawmakers needed to find new ways of inspiring election deniers to trust the system again.
When asked why additional ballot box security was needed, he compared the issue to 9/11 and said there is nothing to prevent people from throwing chains around drop boxes and dragging them off with trucks.
“Well, you know, on Sept. 11, 2001, I bet people really wished they had locked the cabins on airplanes on Sept. 10, but it was too late,” Proctor said. “If we’ve identified vulnerabilities, it’s ridiculous that we would not try to address those vulnerabilities until we’ve got evidence that they’ve been exploited in the election.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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GOP readies 'shameful' vote to oust progressive from House committee
February 02, 2023
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and her progressive allies are denouncing the Republican effort to oust her from a key House panel as early as Thursday.
House Republicans on Wednesday advanced a resolution to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC). In a party-line 218-209 vote, GOP lawmakers approved a rule that sets the parameters for debate on the chamber floor prior to a final vote.
"It remains unclear when House Republicans will bring the Omar resolution to the floor for debate and a final vote," The Hill reported. "Democrats still need to formally submit a separate resolution with their roster for the Foreign Affairs Committee." That is expected to happen by Thursday.
The GOP has sought for years to remove Omar, a principled critic of Israeli apartheid and Washington's role in perpetuating it, from the HFAC. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has unilateral authority to boot any lawmaker from a select committee, but because the HFAC is a standing committee, removing a member from it requires a full House vote.
On Tuesday night, after Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) introduced the measure to remove Omar from the HFAC over supposedly "antisemitic" remarks, the progressive lawmaker tweeted that "there is nothing objectively true in this resolution."
In response to Miller's argument that "Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people"—a contention that wrongfully equates criticism of Israel's colonization of Palestine with criticism of Jewish people—the Minnesota Democrat said that "if not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees."
In a Wednesday statement, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) called the House GOP's pending vote against Omar "the latest racist attack by the far-right to silence progressives in Congress who speak up for a human rights-centered foreign policy, including Palestinian human rights."
"The GOP is riddled with white nationalists and antisemites. It is infuriating and absurd that they are trying to distract from the bigoted hatred in their own party by attacking a progressive woman of color."
"Anti-Palestinian politicians and organizations" have long tried "to censor the Congresswoman's consistent calls for accountability for the Israeli government's apartheid and human rights violations against Palestinians," said JVP. "Sadly, these Republican attempts to attack Congresswoman Omar have been buoyed in the past by attacks on Palestinian rights advocates within the Democratic party."
According to Beth Miller, political director of JVP Action: "These attacks are happening because Congresswoman Omar is effective. Because she is a progressive. Because she is a Black Muslim woman. Because her values are universal and include fighting for Palestinians."
"The GOP is riddled with white nationalists and antisemites," said Miller. "It is infuriating and absurd that they are trying to distract from the bigoted hatred in their own party by attacking a progressive woman of color. Congresswoman Omar consistently calls for the Israeli government to be held accountable for its crimes—crimes the GOP would rather cover up."
Meanwhile, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday that the CPC "stands fully behind our deputy chair."
"Omar is a valued member of the Democratic caucus and of this Congress," said Jayapal. "Throughout her service in Congress and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she has brought her essential and unique voice and lived experience to bear: as a refugee, war survivor, and soon, as the first African-born ranking member on the Africa Subcommittee."
"You cannot remove a member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views," Jayapal continued. "This is both ludicrous and dangerous. In the last Congress, Republican members were moved from committees with a bipartisan vote for endangering the safety of their colleagues. Speaker McCarthy is attempting to take revenge and draw false comparisons."
Jayapal praised the few Republicans "who have already rejected this idea" and expressed hope that "more will join them to state their opposition so it is not brought to the floor, or vote against it should it be brought to the floor."
As The Washington Post reported Wednesday:
Republican leaders have worked for weeks to ensure that there were enough votes to pass a resolution removing Omar from the committee through their razor-thin majority margin, which stands at three as Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) remains away from Washington recuperating from a traumatic fall. Opposition to the effort emerged last month as four lawmakers signaled that they wouldn't support the measure, citing concerns that it would continue a precedent set by former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).But the inclusion of a provision in the four-page resolution, that Republicans argue provides due process to Omar, seems to have appeased at least one crucial voter, as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) announced Tuesday that she would now support the measure. Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have publicly suggested that they would vote against it before the resolution's text was released Tuesday, while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said he remained undecided. Republican leadership aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline private whip counts, said they have the votes to pass the measure whenever Democrats formally appoint Omar to her committee.
Jayapal affirmed earlier this week that Democrats "will stand strongly with Rep. Omar: an esteemed and invaluable legislator, a respectful and kind colleague, and a courageous progressive leader."
On Sunday, Omar argued that House Republicans are trying to oust her from the HFAC because they disapprove of having a Muslim refugee from Somalia on the panel, as Common Dreamsreported.
Omar has been the frequent target of Islamophobic bigotry, including from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which paid Facebook to host attack ads that endangered the lawmaker's life. Due to credible death threats, the Minnesota Democrat is often assigned security by the U.S. Capitol Police.
In her Sunday conversation with CNN's Dana Bash, Omar acknowledged that she apologized for the wording of her February 2019 tweets tying U.S. lawmakers' support for Israel to money from lobbyists—at the time, she specifically called out AIPAC, which has given millions of dollars to members of Congress.
The GOP's campaign to expel her from the HFAC "is politically motivated," Omar said. "In some cases, it's motivated by the fact that many of these members don't believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee."
On Monday, Omar asserted that her work on the HFAC has contributed positively to "advancing human rights, holding government officials accountable for past harms, and advancing a more just and peaceful foreign policy."
\u201cWe\u2019ve been clear in our work to center international law and human rights.\u201d
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Rep. Ilhan Omar) 1675118259
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) concurred, tweeting Monday that Omar's work on the panel "matters deeply and Republicans' cowardly efforts to remove and silence her are a disgrace."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Pressley, writing on social media: "It's shameful that Republicans are trying to remove her [from the HFAC] after smearing her for years. We need her voice, values, and expertise on the committee."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, noted that "Omar is once again facing ugly personal and political attacks with incredible courage and dignity."
"It is outrageous that the House leadership wants to boot her off the Foreign Affairs Committee," Sanders tweeted. "Fair-minded Republicans must join Democrats in preventing that from happening."
This article has been updated to include a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace.
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